The Cruel Optimism of Technological Dreams

Abstract

Bassett argues that artificial intelligence (AI) is destined to disappoint and destabilise because it fosters what Lauren Berlant called ‘cruel optimism’, where the very thing that promises to make your life better is in fact the obstacle to happiness. Bassett deconstructs AI into a ‘cluster’ of partial promises that are only executed on behalf of the select few. Drawing on Berlant, Bassett views societal desires and attachments to AI as giving meaning, sense, and continuity to human endeavour, and therefore as both necessary and harmful. Bassett compels us to consider how transhumanists and substantial media reporting present the possibility of artificial general intelligence as the final stage in orthogenetic evolution. These broader aspirations are not merely communicated to the public, but sold to us as ‘new’, as the threshold of an unrealisable future kept on hold by avoidable delays.